TheRetroCritic

Released on Netflix this month, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is a documentary revealing actor Jim Carrey's unusual behaviour on the set of Man On The Moon as he appeared to embody the spirit of ground-breaking comedian Andy Kaufman both on and off camera. A bushy-beard Jim Carrey is interviewed on the subject and this is intercut with actual footage gathered back in 1999 during Man On The Moon's production. We meet a Carrey completely committed to "be" Andy Kaufman (or the typically aloof Tony Clifton) from start to finish confusing just about everyone from cast-members to director Milos Forman. With the help of Kaufman's partner in crime Bob Zmuda, Carrey keeps this method acting train going no matter what, staging stunts at the Playboy Mansion, with the crew and reporters in the process. One staged incident, for example, sees him getting seemingly gravely injured while filming a wrestling scene in the film and getting carried out on a stretcher. The a

Here's the video version of the In God We Tru$t review.

Here's the video version of my review of Heartbeeps .

You may not remember this but prankster par-excellence Andy Kaufman once had breakfast with professional wrestler Freddie Blassie and filmed the whole thing turning it into a cult film of sorts. My Breakfast With Blassie opens with Kaufman attending the premiere of the film dressed up like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver and you're already in typically bizarre territory. Then we cut to him taking the bus to a cafe where he meets Blassie and they have breakfast. Of course, this being an Andy Kaufman film you can expect the entire thing to be a unique piece of performance art to a certain extent as the breakfast slowly but surely goes awry when Kaufman starts to get into arguments with the women sitting at the next table before hitting on one of them and, ultimately, having one guy throw up all over the breakfast table. The latter character being played by the comedian's right-hand man Bob Zmuda. The idea of Andy Kaufman making a parody of My Dinner With Andre is already f

A year after the release of Monty Python's groundbreaking religious spoof Life Of Brian , we got Marty Feldman comedy In God We Tru$t , another satire this time focusing on the money-grubbing aspects of those pretending to speak on the Church's behalf. The film's plot is very Blues Brothers in spirit as innocent monk Ambrose (Feldman) is sent out of the monastery for the very first time with the respectable mission of bringing back $5000 to save the place. At the same time, Brother Ambrose encounters his share of charlatans working in the name of God including a church truck-driving drunk (Peter Boyle) and a diabolical televangelist played by a show-stealing Andy Kaufman. Ambrose also meets his first love-interest, a friendly prostitute played by Louise Lasser. There's a lot going on in this movie and yet you never feel it knows where it's going. Unlike Life Of Brian which was so clever in its writing that taking away one scene from it would be, well, blasphem

There's something kinda perfect about the fact that Andy Kaufman's only proper movie remains Heartbeeps , an off-beat romantic comedy about two robots who fall in love and leave their factory to go on a life-changing adventure. Much like with most of Kaufman's comedy, critics and audiences back in the day just didn't get this movie and it was quickly dismissed as a bomb and a failure. Watching the film now, it's obvious why Heartbeeps didn't exactly wow the public: initially aimed at a young audience, the humour is at times much too weird or adult-themed and both Kaufman and Bernadette Peters look positively freakish. There's a cute baby robot thrown in there but, otherwise, this is one that only fans of the lead's unique sense of humour could possibly enjoy. Anyone else should find themselves scratching their heads, wondering why this movie even exists. Not that Heartbeeps isn't funny, quite the opposite, it's just that the jokes are so biz